The present invention relates to a user interface for displaying relationships among tables, and more particularly for displaying two sets of one or more groups of related tables in ways that visually depict relations between the two sets.
Tools exist that analyze user databases and discover relationships among tables in the databases. IBM's Optim Database Relationship Analyzer (“DRA”) is one such tool. DRA enables users to run repeated, iterative discoveries on their databases. Respective results of these discoveries are made up of one or more groups of related tables. A set of one or more groups of related tables identified by a discovery run is referred to herein as a “version” of the groups or of the tables.
DRA presents versions to a user in order to facilitate user examination. Also, since other tools exist for which it is useful to know relationships among database tables, presentation of versions also facilitates use of database tables with these other tools.
DRA provides some capability for users to view differences among the versions, which enables users to see how database tables and relationships among the tables have changed over time. DRA users view these differences in a visual compare window within the tool by selecting two versions the user would like to compare.